


wanderlust

by snowdarkred



Category: West Wing
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Political Campaigns, Pre-Canon, Summer, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-18
Updated: 2012-03-18
Packaged: 2017-11-02 03:08:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/364326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowdarkred/pseuds/snowdarkred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>wan·der·lust  (wndr-lst)<br/>n.<br/>A very strong or irresistible impulse to travel.<br/>[German : wandern, to wander (from Middle High German) + Lust, desire (from Middle High German, from Old High German; see las- in Indo-European roots).]</p>
            </blockquote>





	wanderlust

**Author's Note:**

> It's stupidly hot down here, and it's not even summer yet. Not fair!

Sam wakes up with gritty eyes and a pounding headache. Damp heat presses on him, even though it’s only six in the morning. Yesterday, the campaign buses had travelled for five hours in the rain while the bus driver complained about his sunglasses not being dark enough. The campaign season is building in earnest now, and he has no idea how they’re going to survive the next four months. Electric tension radiates from every staff member and volunteer, creating a circuit of unstoppable energy.

Sam wakes up with gritty eyes, a pounding headache, and three new ideas for the speech he’s been fiddling with on and off for the past two days. They won’t win the South; everyone already knows that. However, Governor Bartlet still insisted that they make the trip down to Atlanta, and Sam had backed him up.

Not that Sam’s word holds a lot of weight by itself. He’s just a kid to these people, these amazing, brilliant people. He’s a hotshot lawyer, a crafty writer, an eager idealist, but he’s not a political mastermind. Yet. But his support is enough for Bartlet to dig his heels in, which is enough to prod Toby into action, which is enough to get CJ and Josh on board…. 

Which is enough to motivate Leo into taking a serious look at what they could accomplish on the national level with a trip down to the Deep South.

Sam spent his two and a half years of law school in the South, sweating it out in North Carolina. He had thought, before the slow procession of Democratic campaigners through small towns and bone-dry cities, that he knew what a Southern summer felt like. He was wrong.

Sam wakes up with gritty eyes, a pounding headache, three new ideas, and coated in sweat. The cheap hotel sheets cling to him as he pulls himself out of bed. He presses his forehead against the soft chill of the bathroom mirror and just breathes. It’s like inhaling cream soup -- too thick and hot to be healthy.

A cold shower doesn’t sooth his headache, but that’s okay. Sam didn’t expect it to. Campaign headaches are par for the course. He pops a few Tylenol and heads down to raid the Continental breakfast. His hair is still damp against the base of the his neck.

When Josh runs his fingers through it, intentionally going against the grain, it sticks up, making him look like a lost boy band member led astray by political bullies.

“You should be so lucky,” Josh smirks when Sam says this. He smirks, but he still reaches over and helps Sam smooth it down before any of the press can reach for their cameras. “You got in this mess all by yourself, pretty boy.”

They both know that’s a lie, but Sam smiles along anyway. One of the photographers finally got to their camera, and that’s the picture they snap: Josh, Sam, and CJ, sitting around a battered table with coffee mugs and stale bagels, smiling and laughing like the day couldn’t get better. Later, when they win the election and the White House and everything that comes with it, Sam remembers that photo. He remembers being unbearably _tired_.

 

\---

 

Their hotel is just outside of Atlanta, on the edge of what the locals call the Perimeter, a large circle of interstate that encases a number of cities, all of which seems to melt into the capital. 

The suburban South isn’t really that different from any other suburb in the country. Sure, the soccer moms and white collar dads speak with a different accent, and they say y’all in a way that makes Sam wish he could taste sound, just to see if it would glide like sweet tea over his tongue, but at their root, they’re just like everyone else: They care about their taxes and their children and their jobs. Sam’s speech, rewritten in a flurry of dying pens and dirty napkins, is greeted with surprised applause. Their respect feels like a greater victory than the entire state of New Hampshire. 

Sam’s back hurts from his uncomfortable hotel bed, but when he spots a free hour where he can slip away unnoticed, he takes it. It’s July, and the sidewalks are unbelievably hot. He sheds his suit before heading out, making sure to don a campaign t-shirt and shorts. He pulls on one of Toby’s Yankees caps.

Heat radiates up, wrapping around his legs and under his clothes. Sam’s completely soaked in sweat in a matter of minutes, but he doesn’t let that stop him. He hasn’t seen proper sun in what feels like ages. Fat clouds sit on the horizon, netted back by trees and stretching buildings. They look like bruises. 

Sam grew up in southern California, where the summers are dry and the days clear with a surety of smog. There’s less traffic on the roads he passes, but he can still see the glint of sour yellow in the sky, clinging around edges. 

(He makes a note: He could use the air pollution problem as a point in the upcoming Atlanta speech, use examples from their own community.)

Sam’s headache grows until it encompasses the rest of his body. It ebbs and flows in time with his pulse, building and crashing and building again. The sunlight has turned a dusty orange by the time Sam stops and rests on a convenient bench. The air is too thick, like soup, causing him to pant like a dog. Cars flash by, and the reflected light feels like knives digging into his skin. He hasn’t eaten since that morning, when the photographers turned their cameras on him and Josh and CJ; he remembers this as his stomach twists in and out of existence, like it can’t decide between nauseousness and hunger. 

He’s stopped sweating, and his skin feels hotter than the sidewalk, his headache swells until it feels like it’s going to crack open his skull. He closes his eyes, just for a minute….

 

\---

 

“Jesus Christ, Sam!” Josh shouts. Sam jerks and blinks, snapping back into reality with a jolt. The sun has vanished, and the sweat has turned sticky and cold on his skin. He had closed his eyes, just for a minute, but sleep had caught him.

Josh flings open the passenger door of the car, and where did he get that? And why is Toby climbing out of the driver’s side, his face a mask of rage and residual worry?

“Where the fuck were you?” Josh demands. He reaches for Sam and grabs him, ignoring the clamminess that makes Sam wince. “Jesus, do you know how worried we were?”

Sam blinks again and tries to think about why Josh is so upset. He’d only stepped out for a moment, just an hour. How had so much time passed? His headache had reseded to bearable levels, at least, but his hands can’t stop shaking.

“I think I feel asleep,” he says with surprise.

“Ya think?” Toby growls, looming threateningly. His hands are gentle, though, when he rests them on Sam’s cheeks and forehead. “Are you sick or something?”

“No,” Sam says with some consideration. 

“Really? Because I think wandering off in this godforsaken heat without, A, telling anyone what you were doing or where you were going, and B, falling asleep on a freakin’ _bench_ is a sure sign of some kind of illness! It has to be, Sam, because otherwise it just means that you’re stupid, and I’d like to think that, Josh aside, we avoided hiring idiots.”

“Hey!” Josh protests.

“You didn’t even bring your pager with you!” Toby exclaims, throwing his hands in the air. “What if something had happened? What if we had had to leave suddenly? You don’t even have your wallet, do you?” Sam shakes his head, ashamed at his lack of forethought. “What if something had happened to _you_? You didn’t even bring a bottle of water!”

“I’m sorry,” Sam says, like an errant child. He hates them then, in a sudden flash. He’s not their kid brother; he’s not some bright young intern that they have to nurture. He’s their coworker, their friend, and they ought to treat him like it. “I didn’t know I had a curfew.” 

Toby scowls at him. The speech writer’s face is shadowed in darkness, but Sam can still see the sting of rejection in his eyes. He feels like an asshole. They worried about him. He would feel the same if CJ or Josh or Toby or Mandy disappeared without a word in a strange city.

“I think you have heatstroke,” Josh says after a long moment steals by.

“That is a distinct possibility,” Sam says.

Toby looks away, examining the ground like it’s riveting, and Josh keeps his hand on Sam’s shoulder as he stands. He only wobbles a little, which is better than the last time when Sam forgot to eat or drink for hours and hours. That time he fainted. 

 

\---

 

The night is cooler than the day, but the heat still finds its way into Sam’s hotel room. It creeps under the door and through the window and fills up the room, slowing down the fan to a lazy whirl and rendering it useless. Sam tosses and turns, but sleep stays out of reach. There’s no room for it in his thoughts. All he can feel is his pounding headache and weight of Georgia humidity. 


End file.
